17 comments

  1. Me — Okay, uh. Roll Physique. They'll defend with something.

    Player — What action is this? I want to know if that strength type stunt we were talking about should apply to this.

    Me — Sure, sounds good. You can use that stunt. They're going to dodge using Athletics. Success puts them into the next zone, style gives you a Boost. Sound good?

    That's how I'd do that.

  2. Yep. Thinking about it after I asked, I realized it was easy to figure out if I just decided on how to do what they want to do. I got hung up because I started out backwards – trying to figure out what to call it in the rules. "Don't start with the rules," indeed. I should know better by now.

  3. Ahh. Good point. In this case, in my imaginary scenario, the player wants the guy in that other zone because there's an aspect on that zone he wants his partner to be able to use or something. Still "Success: You achieve your goal" = Overcome.

  4. Me, I'd make it one of the things you can do instead of getting a boost, with a "succeed with style" result. (But that's when it's a side-effect rather than main goal.)

  5. Of course the other option is to establish a 'grappled' aspect or similar, at which point it makes sense in the narrative that if you move, they come with you – though they can resist your movement.

    Whether it's possible to knock them back a zone and how it's handled might depend on exactly where in the zone they're standing and how much sense it makes in the narrative. With larger zones it might take a few punches to get them all the way across to the next zone. 

    How about punching someone to create an advantage of 'knocked back' when they're standing near the edge of the zone and then invoking that aspect for effect to say they teeter into the next zone? It's not quite a compel so I think you could get away with that.

    As always, lots of tools and methods for doing it according to the taste of your group. =)

  6. If you do it the way I just suggested that gives the advantage of letting Fred's method work as is as well – you just invoke the boost of 'knocked back' to move them back a bit into the next zone or position them where you want them in the current zone.

    With the proviso that if the re-positioning applies an immediate disadvantage or complication to the victim it perhaps should count as a compel, with the need to spend a fate point? "I knock him back under the giant electromagnet and then turn it on!"

  7. I'd do it similarly to what +Fred Hicks said: Create Advantage action with the aim of establishing "Knocked Back" as an aspect, and if you SwS on the action, you knocked him back far enough that he's out of the zone, in exchange for a Boost. The other way around — moved a zone, but no Aspect unless you get a Boost — works just as well though.

  8. Hah! It just occurred to me that under the giant electromagnet is a perfect aspect, so in that case it would be a create advantage action. It's just that the required advantage is situational in nature so you have to also move them as part of the action.

  9. There's a lot of fun design space in stunts for options based on trading your Boost from success w/ style on attack rolls. Trading it for moving yourself for a charge, trading it for knock back, upgrading it to a full aspect, pushing back someone's initiative next turn, etc. Special moves galore.

  10. Sounds like an overcome action to me. I mean, when you want to move yourself into another zone, it's an overcome with Athletics, right? So moving someone else would be an overcome with Physique since you're bodily moving them.

  11. And it doesn't have to be Physique. You can certainly maneuver someone to another zone through Fight or Athletics. Heck, I could see some characters or monsters using Provoke for that!

  12. Let's come at the mechanics side from a different direction.

    From an Object Oriented PoV (which is very consistent with aspects in general), Location is just another characteristic.  An unspoken aspect saying I am in this zone.

    So sure, you're either Overcoming that implicit aspect (which then forces it to be replaced with a Now I'm In That Zone implicit aspect) or you're attempting to Create Advantage to put a You're In That Zone aspect on them, which is resisted by their current implicit location aspect.

    Not that I think the aspects are necessary, but if we pretend they exist, the mechanics seem, to me at least, to become clear.

    The fact that they are In Location A resists your attempt to assert they are In Location B.  As will anything else that reasonable resists the sort of action you're using to move them, including most "barrier" aspects (it's much harder to push someone thru a wall than across an imaginary line), movement difficulties (it's harder to push someone mired in hip-deep mud), etc.  Some movement difficulties would make pushing easier (it's easy to push someone on a low friction surface, assuming you have traction yourself).  Some actions (Provoke or Bluff) convince them to change themselves, but the mechanics are the same using different skills.  But this is familiar difficulty setting and invocation possibilities, right?

    The important thing to note, IMO, in selecting between Overcome or Create Advantage is if you're trying to remove a position-based advantage they currently have (Overcome) or create a position-based advantage for yourself or disadvantage for them (Create).  In other words, am I moving them from where they are (Overcome) or to where I want them to be (Create)?

    If you're trying to push them into something that does damage, I could even see this as an Attack action (perhaps losing a point of stress as a trade for the minor boost/locational aspect change, as Fred suggested)!

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